Why Jeff Flake Is Going to Need a Good Dog

Jeff Flake is about to find out what it means to be a political orphan.

I know because I’ve been there and I can give Flake a sense of what he can expect now that he has left the safe confines of the tribe. His conservative credentials will be attacked and his motives questioned; he’ll be filleted as a sellout, a RINO, a Judas, and even as a closet liberal. Even though he and Senator Bob Corker gave voice to what many of their colleagues say in private, they will become pariahs among many of the groups that had once been allies. And they will lose friends.

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I suspect Flake already knows some of this. Although his announcement that he would not seek reelection came as a surprise, it was also somewhat anti-climactic. Ever since he published his searing indictment of Donald Trump, Conscience of a Conservative, Flake has been a dead man walking.

His decision to write that book was a genuine (and exceedingly rare) act of political courage. But it was also an act of naivete. He hoped that his appeal to the better angels of his fellow Republicans—calling them back to a politics of principle and decency—would strike a chord with the electorate. Instead, in 2017, it alienated him from the GOP’s Trumpified base and effectively put an end to his senatorial career. That Republicans are about to replace conservatives like John McCain, Corker and Flake with bizarre outliers like Roy Moore in Alabama (and perhaps Kelli Ward in Arizona) suggests just how much Trumpism has already transformed the GOP.

Flake admitted as much to the Arizona Republic, when he said he had come to realize that “there may not be a place for a Republican like me in the current Republican climate or the current Republican Party.”

“Here’s the bottom line,” he said, “the path that I would have to travel to get the Republican nomination is a path I’m not willing to take, and that I can’t in good conscience take … It would require me to believe in positions I don't hold on such issues as trade and immigration, and it would require me to condone behavior that I cannot condone.”

In an op-ed for the Washington Post, Flake also tried to draw a parallel between his challenge to Trump and Joseph Welch’s famous confrontation with Senator Joe McCarthy.

“Until this moment, senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness,” Welch, the Army’s chief counsel, told McCarthy during the Army-McCarthy hearings in 1954. “You’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?”

Flake noted that the “moral power of Welch’s words ended McCarthy’s rampage on American values, and effectively his career as well.” He also noted that after Welch spoke, “the hearing room erupted in applause, those in attendance seemingly shocked by such bracing moral clarity in the face of a moral vandal. Someone had finally spoken up and said: Enough.”

Except that after Flake spoke … crickets (at least from his own party). Even though Corker, McCain and former President George W. Bush struck similar themes, none of his colleagues took the cue to stand up and echo their indictment. (Though apparently Ben Sasse of Nebraska did lead the applause.)

This is another reality of the era of Trump. As long as the base sticks with Trump, the elected GOP will stick with the safety of the herd.

So Republican dissidents like Corker and Flake now find themselves in a prominent, but lonely place. While Flake will undoubtedly enjoy the “strange new respect” he will get from the media, he will now also see himself excommunicated from the movement that he has been part of for his entire professional life. (The American Conservative Union gave him a lifetime rating of 93.)

Harry Truman once said that if you want a friend in Washington, get a dog. But Corker and Flake might need more than one. They will soon find they have far fewer friends than they might have thought. For much of the GOP base, politics is no longer about specific ideas or programs, but has become a test of loyalty to Trump and all his ways.

Again, this feels familiar to me. It’s always worthwhile standing up for what you think is right, but there is a price. And in the era of Trump, that price is often high and even personal. Earlier this month, the conservative think tank for which I had edited a public policy magazine for 27 years announced that I had been dismissed. They told me I no longer “fit their brand.” The night of Flake’s speech, Tucson radio host James T. Harris posted a Twitter meme in which he declared that because of my criticisms of the Trumpian direction of the GOP I had gone “full libtard.” This would normally be routine social media stuff, except that Harris is someone whose career I had helped mentor and launch. For years, we were friends and I supported him personally and professionally through some hard times. But then came Trump.

Flake also should not expect #NeverTrumpers to rush to his side. Frequent Trump critic Ben Shapiro scorched Flake in a Twitter storm in which he called Flake’s speech “sheer BS” and said that “Blaming Trump and Trump voters is a way of playing hero while quitting because he was going to lose.” Erick Erickson tweeted: “Jeff Flake is not retiring because of Trumpism. He’s retiring because he’s a fraud and liar.” This from a man who has said that “we ... know President Trump lies regularly.”

So the incentives for other GOP elected officials to join the ranks of Trump critics are, to say the least, limited. This is especially true for anyone who is contemplating a reelection run. Steve Bannon, armed with the Mercer family’s campaign cash, roams the country vowing to make any apostate’s life hell. Who wants to risk it? Not Ted Cruz, who told his colleagues via a radio interview to “Shut up and do your job.”

Nor can Flake expect an especially warm welcome on the other side of the aisle; the current moment of bipartisan goodwill passes away the moment he votes with Trump on, say, tax cuts.

Flake will also discover that there is a limited constituency for the politics of decency. In his Senate speech, Flake spoke eloquently about the damage that Trump’s behavior was doing to the fabric of American democracy:

"We must never regard as 'normal' the regular and casual undermining of our democratic norms and ideals. We must never meekly accept the daily sundering of our country — the personal attacks, the threats against principles, freedoms and institutions; the flagrant disregard for truth or decency, the reckless provocations, most often for the pettiest and most personal reasons, reasons having nothing whatsoever to do with the fortunes of the people that we have all been elected to serve."

But, in fact, this has become the new normal. Trump’s acolytes in politics and social media alike have modeled their behavior on his, combining the worst traits of the schoolyard bully, the thin-skinned nastiness that mimics confidence and the strut and sneer that substitutes for actual strength. Former Sheriff David Clarke, who refers to Black Lives Matter as “black slime,” presided over multiple deaths in his Milwaukee jail and once threatened to “knock out” a man who accused him of harassment, remains a rock star on the right, even as Flake goes into exile.

Many of Trump’s defenders rationalize all of this by suggesting that Trump’s behavior is a matter of style, and insist that his policies are more important than his “brash” personality. Both Corker and Flake took aim at those euphemisms, insisting Trump’s conduct reflected on his character, judgment, honesty, decency and fitness for office. These were things their fellow conservatives used to care about.

But we should never underestimate the powers of rationalization, especially among those Vichy Republicans who have cast their lot with Trump. Indeed, the worse things get, the more likely they are to lash out at the critics, whose words gnaw at their guilty sense that they may have made a bad bargain. They will never forgive McCain, Corker or Flake for reminding them of the choice they have made.

But at least they will know they kept their integrity intact. And that still counts for something, even in these bizarre times.